Tony Blair has lost little time in naming the man who is to step into Alastair Campbell's shoes as his communications chief.

David Hill has impeccable Labour credentials. He was the party's director of communications between 1991 and 1997.

And before that he was the chief of staff to Labour Party deputy leader, Roy Hattersley, during the Kinnock era.

His former boss, writing in the Guardian, gives Mr Hill a glowing report.

"Hill finds it almost pathologically impossible to deceive or dissemble. That is why he is the right man to re-establish a relationship of trust between Downing Street and the press."

New role

Press reports had surfaced before Alastair Campbell announced he was quitting that Mr Hill would be the prime minister's next communication's chief and in his post ahead of the autumn conference season.

The PM has chosen David Hill

When he ended his first stint at the Labour Party he worked as a director of the public relations firm Good Relations. The company is part of the Bell Pottinger empire, overseen by Baroness Thatcher's former image-maker Lord Bell.

But he did not spend his time working entirely in the commercial sector and during the 2001 general election campaign, Mr Hill worked as a senior Labour press spokesman.

Life-long Labour

Mr Hill, now 55, was born and raised in Birmingham. He was educated at King Edward's School, and at later at Oxford.

He started work for the Labour Party and Roy Hattersley when he left university in the early 1970s.

His long-term partner is Hilary Coffman, a press officer at Downing Street.